|
Disarmament DocumentationBack to Disarmament Documentation 'I have not seen smoking-gun, concrete evidence about the connection', US Secretary of State Colin Powell on Saddam Hussein & Al-Quaeda, January 8'Powell Affirms Confidence in Decision To Wage Iraq War', January 8, 2004. U.S. DEPARTMENT OF STATE SECRETARY OF STATE COLIN L. POWELL QUESTION: Mr. Secretary, can I try you on something a little less rosy than some of the things you cited? Iraq U.S. inspectors are pulling out. Carnegie, in a report today, says the threat was vastly exaggerated, Iraq posed no immediate danger to the U.S. They have some recommendations that the CIA Director's job be made a career job instead of a political appointee. A lot of probables, a lot of maybes were left out by senior officials in describing what intelligence had uncovered. Looking ahead, but also looking back, would you -- would you have rephrased your speech to the UN, in light of all of this, if you had another chance? SECRETARY POWELL: No. I knew exactly the circumstances under which I was presenting that speech to the UN on the 5th of February: the whole world would be watching, and there would be those who would applaud every word, and there would be those who were going to be skeptical of every word. That's why I took the time (clears throat) -- excuse me -- I took the time to go out to the agency and sit down with the experts. And anything that we did not feel was solid and multi-sourced, we did not use in that speech. What the Carnegie report, which I have not read, but I'm familiar with it from press accounts this morning, it said that there was that capability within Iraq and they were doing these kinds of things. And they believe that we, perhaps, overstated it, but they did not say it wasn't there. The fact of the matter is, Iraq did have weapons of mass destruction, and programs for weapons of mass destruction, and used weapons of mass destruction against Iran and against their own people. That's a fact. Now, that's back in 1988 when they used it against their own people. But throughout the '90s, when they had every opportunity to come clean, make the declarations, and get right with the international community, they had the chance to respond to every one of those UN resolutions during the '90s, when they were threatened by President Clinton in 1998 with a bombing and they still didn't come clean, and then they caused the inspectors to have to be forced out of the country, there is, I think, a solid case that has been made to many governments by their intelligence agencies, and that has been the consistent view of UN inspectors and of the United States intelligence community, that this was a danger we had to worry about. Now, in terms of intention, he always had it. And anybody who thinks that Saddam Hussein, last year, was just, you know, waiting to give all of this up, even though he was given the opportunity to do so, he didn't do it. What he was waiting to do was see if he could break the will of the international community, get rid of any potential for future inspections, and get back to his intentions, which were to have weapons of mass destruction. And he kept the infrastructure. He kept the programs intact. Where the debate is, is why haven't we found huge stockpiles, and why haven't we found large caches of these weapons. Let's let the Iraqi Survey Group complete its work. There has been the movement out of some of the individuals from the group. I presume that their particular job is finished. But I am confident of what I presented last year. The intelligence community is confident of the material they gave me; I was representing them. It was information they presented to the Congress. It was information they had presented publicly, and they stand behind it. And this game is still unfolding... QUESTION: On the subject of weapons of mass destruction, Mr. Secretary, one of the other conclusions of that report was that there was no evidence of a connection between Saddam Hussein and al-Qaida and that there was no evidence of a likelihood that he would transfer weapons to al-Qaida. What do you think about that, looking back? And I know that, you know, hindsight is 20/20, but to think back -- SECRETARY POWELL: My presen -- QUESTION: Do you think that there were ways other than war to have handled this threat and that the -- that it was not an imminent threat to the United States? SECRETARY POWELL: My presentation on the 5th of February when I talked to this issue made it clear that we had seen some links and connections to terrorist organizations over time, and I focused on one particular case, Zawahiri, and I think that was a pretty solid case. There is not -- you know, I have not seen smoking-gun, concrete evidence about the connection, but I think the possibility of such connections did exist and it was prudent to consider them at the time that we did. Were there other ways to solve this problem? I think the President gave the international community every opportunity to solve this problem another way. The international community gave the Iraqis 12 years to solve this problem any other way. The President took the case to the international community and said: For 12 years, you have been defied. What are you going to do now? It's time for us to act. And the President, after a reasonable period of time -- inspectors were still being thwarted, we got an incorrect, ridiculous declaration from the Iraqi Government in response to Resolution 1441 -- and after waiting a sufficient period of time, the President decided he had to act because he believed that whatever the size of the stockpile, whatever one might think about it, he believed that the region was in danger, America was in danger, and he would act and he did act. And he acted with a large number of countries who felt likewise, and he acted under the authority that we were absolutely sure we had because we negotiated it that way in UN Resolution 1441. Source: US State Department, Washington File, http://usinfo.state.gov. © 2003 The Acronym Institute. |